Alerts

We are kicking off our campaign to fundraise to print the 2017 directory! Please help us reach our goal of $3,000! Any amount makes a difference in the lives of those on the inside. Each individual directory PARC sends costs $1.50 ($0.75 in printing, $0.70 in stamps, and $0.05 in envelopes), which annually costs over $22,000 to print and mail in response to the 15,000 requests.

For the last sixteen years, PARC has corresponded with and mailed a directory of resources to prisoners, their friends, and family members. We are often the first point of contact for people to connect with prisoners' rights organizations, community organizations, prison literature and arts projects, family and visiting resources, health care and legal resources, parole and pre-release resources, and the prison abolition movement.

What is the cause of the spiraling increase in police assaults on people whom they should help to protect --- not brutalize or kill? In just the month of March, 2015, American police killed 111 people -- more people than the police in the United Kingdom have killed since the year 1900.[1]

A federal judge in Baton Rouge has called for the unconditional release of Albert Woodfox, the only remaining imprisoned member of the Angola 3.

Woodfox, 68, was placed solitary confinement at Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola and other state facilities for more than 40 years for reasons related to the 1972 murder of prison guard Brent Miller.

Civil rights advocates lobbied Facebook to stop automatically deleting all profiles of current American prisoners, The Daily Beast has learned. But the debate on whether someone is too dangerous ever to have one is still raging.

One day at work, Larissa admitted to logging onto Facebook “to see my kids’ Easter pictures.”

She had been put on work furlough because the Alabama Department of Corrections deemed her a low security risk. She was allowed to leave prison to work shifts at a local Burger King.

Congress members are pushing to restore Pell Grants to help prisoners pay for their college education.

By Zaid Jilani / AlterNet / June 3, 2015

In 1965, Congress passed Title IV of the Higher Education Act, allowing prison inmates for the first time to apply for Pell Grants to finance their college educations. For decades, tens of thousands of prisoners took advantage of this benefit, using it to finance a path into opportunities after they served their sentences.

Literally after 20 hours of torture Mumia remains disappeared. His family and his lawyers have been prevented from receiving any information.

On the morning of Monday March 30th, prison officials at SCI Mahanoy say that Mumia Abu-Jamal had a "medical crisis" and was transported from the prison to the intensive care unit at the Schuylkill Medical Center, in Pottsville. PA.

Shackled to the bed, alone, and prevented from knowing that his family is close by he remains in intensive care. Prison officials and hospital officials when not spreading misinformation are denying Mumia's family access to visits, while also denying the family and his lawyers any information or records about his condition.

Mumia's family is keeping vigil in the ICU critical care visiting room.

His supporters and lawyers were at trial challenging the Revictimization Review Act aka the "Mumia Silencing Act" in Harrisburg, PA when they received word that he had been taken to the hospital.

The Abolitionist Law Center's Bret Grote is in Pottsville and vigorously preparing legal action to gain access to his client for the family and access to his medical records so that independent doctors can intervene.

Mumia Abu-Jamal’s brother Keith Cook stated “The rules that the prisons have are very arcane. They don’t give out any information about prisoners to their families or anyone else. It’s like you have your hands tied because you don’t know how the prisoner is and you have no way of talking to him. I remember a month ago--- Phil Africa exercising in the prison, next thing they know they moved him to a hospital and didn’t tell his family where he was, and three days later he was dead.

"It’s scary. This situation needs to change. The prison authorities need to be more humane to the families of prisoners.”

Pam Africa stated "Prison Officials are lying. Mumia is going through torture at the hands of Department of Corrections through medical neglect. It is clear to people that they want to kill Mumia. They gave him the wrong medication which made his condition worse. Inmates on the inside who questioned what was happening have been subjected to direct retaliation by the superintendent. They have been moving concerned inmates out of Mumia's unit in an effort to both bury and keep this critical information from the public."

Johanna Fernandez of the New York Campaign to Bring Mumia Home noted “Mumia has been complaining about being ill since January. If he had gotten the proper care he needed originally, he would not be in this situation. This crisis illustrates the problem of health care in American prisons as a basic human rights violation. I am personally concerned because Phil Africa of the MOVE organization was rushed to the hospital not long ago in good health and a few days later he was dead. We need to fight to defend Mumia’s life, and that of all prisoners.”

The Abolitionist Law Center is a public interest law firm inspired by the struggle of political and politicized prisoners, and organized for the purpose of abolishing class and race based mass incarceration in the United States. 412-654-9070

CALL NOW and demand that Mumia's family can visit him at the medical center: 570-773-2158